


The Eulogy

by fuzzballsheltiepants



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: ALL THE ANGST, Angst, I mean it, M/M, There is no Happy Ending Here, You Have Been Warned, if you don't at least tear up reading this i have failed, like seriously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-18
Updated: 2018-04-18
Packaged: 2019-04-24 10:16:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14353419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuzzballsheltiepants/pseuds/fuzzballsheltiepants
Summary: Andrew has to give the eulogy for the one person he thought he could never lose





	The Eulogy

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry in advance for this.

Andrew stood under the lights he had left behind so many years ago.  He knew there were people there, facing him, waiting for him to speak: Neil’s family, and his, inside the court, and who knows how many fans up in the stands or around the world, watching on their computers.   All he could think was how pissed Neil would be if he could see the court being used like this, the risk of the chairs marring the polished floor.    
  
He pushed his glasses up and adjusted the microphone, because of course he had to go after fucking Boyd.  There was no part of him that wanted to do this, but he would never forgive himself if he didn’t.  He owed Neil this, no matter what it cost him.  Everyone who mattered was there; everyone but Wymack and Bee, who both had preceded Neil on this journey years ago.  Renee caught his eye, smiling serenely through her tears.  He didn’t know what pictures were showing on the screen over his head.  Dan and Allison had picked them out, spending hours going through them, trying to capture a whole life in a few hundred stills.     
  
“Neil Josten was an idiot,” he began, and he saw fond smiles twitch across the dozens of faces before him.  “And he was brilliant.  He was raised to be a liar, but he told hard truths.  His first instincts were always to run, yet he would stand his ground for anyone he cared about.  He was taught not to love, but he loved more fiercely than anyone I have ever met.  And while he spent the first twenty years of his life trying to be invisible, he spent the last forty never shutting up.  In short, he was a conundrum.”  
  
Right then, Andrew wasn’t sure if he blessed or cursed his perfect memory.  Every moment was there.  Dark haired, dark eyed Neil bolting, then calling him out for not being medicated.  Wrapping him up in a bloody sheet.  Covered in bandages, layers of fresh wounds over old scars.  Beaming like the sun after scoring an impossible goal.  Flopping in his chair at the kitchen table, still disgusting and sweaty after a run.  Cradling Aaron’s first daughter in scarred hands.  Moaning beneath him.  Swamped by Matt and Dan’s children.  Washing dishes in the kitchen with one of the cats on his shoulder.  Reading Green Eggs and Ham in French to the first child they took in because Sam said the sound of that soft language made his nightmares go away.  The pair of them lying tangled on the couch, laughing themselves senseless while Neil plotted how to eviscerate some asshole on the internet.  
  
The feel of his emaciated body shuddering as he gasped his last breaths.  Then the sudden and eternal heaviness in Andrew’s arms, in his heart, as Neil left his body; left him behind.  
  
“The world first came to know Neil because of exy.  While I know for a fact he was inordinately proud of that,” there was gentle laughter from the others, “it was just the surface layer of him.  It was the first part of his identity he clung to, that gave him a foothold to become who he really was.  
  
“At his heart, Neil was an advocate.  It started small, with him standing up fiercely for his teammate on national television, when all logic would have dictated that he keep hidden.  He ended up fighting for all of us that first year, in one way or another, and he never really stopped.  He used his platform as one of the best athletes in the world to speak out again and again.  Which means I have it on good authority that the head of PR of one of his teams burst into tears when he found out Neil had been signed.”  
  
Said head of PR was sitting near the back of the crowd, balding and stooped; he laughed with the rest of them.  Neil had won him over, of course.  As he won almost all of them over, in the end.  
  
_Nobody likes a smart mouth_ , he remembered saying, all those years ago.  _Except you_ , Neil had replied.  Neil had always seen through him.  He wondered what Neil would see now.  What he would make of the empty shell that was left now that Andrew’s heart was gone.  If he would realize that Andrew was just waiting, like the last of the autumn leaves, for a strong wind to come and carry him after.  
  
“I don’t think there’s enough time to go through all of the causes he championed, but I do know that there are so many people in this world who have received support from him.  From queer athletes who followed his lead, to the children and cats we gave safe haven to, to his rather biting indictment of the gender pay gap and the infamous Twitter war he engaged in with a certain former President who shall remain nameless.”  
  
Abruptly the agony surged again, clawing up his throat, choking him.  He needed to feel those scars under his fingers again, to run his hands through graying auburn hair that hadn’t thinned like his own, to dance unseen by anyone but their cats in the garden Neil had insisted on developing during his retirement.  To go back to a year ago, before they first noticed him looking a little gaunt, before they sat in that doctor’s office with the huge window, laced fingers clenching tight with the words “pancreatic cancer” reverberating around them.  He wanted to erase the memory of Neil waking up in that hospital bed with the knowledge that the surgery had failed, and Neil shrugging and saying, _“I should’ve known a knife would never save my life.”_      
  
But he couldn’t go back, none of them could.  He looked at the dozen young men and women watching him with their tear-stained faces, the ones who had grown up with Neil as the shooting star they all followed through the darkness, and cleared his throat.  “Neil seemed to care about everything, which made most people wonder how he ended up with someone who cared about nothing.”  Kevin gave him a knowing look from where he sat next to Nicky’s family.  “I maintain that I provided the necessary balance to keep the world from imploding.  Trust me, the internet would never have been able to handle Neil on social media if it weren’t for my restraining influence.”  A loud “ha!” sounded from someone in the audience and his lips twitched in response.  His friends knew well exactly how much—or little—restraint he had ever exercised, how he goaded more than pruned.    
  
“But the truth is, I have no idea how it happened.  I don’t know why a man who had been so marked by knives would choose someone who wielded them.  I don’t know how he could see through every mask when he wore so many himself.   All I know is, forty one years, three months, and six days passed between the first time I kissed him and the last, and it wasn’t enough.”  
  
He stepped back from the podium and looked up at the ceiling.  Even he wasn’t sure if he was trying to see the photos that were flashing up on the screen, or through the roof to the sky above.  “Thank you,” he murmured, not caring if the microphone caught his words, if the hush that rippled through the stadium was a result of it.  “You were amazing.”  


**Author's Note:**

> Um, yeah. I apologize for my brain. If you want to yell at me on Tumblr, HMU @fuzzballsheltiepants. But comments are appreciated as always.


End file.
